Page 20

Chapter Twenty

VIVI

“You’ve been staring at that Google results page for an awfully long time. The consensus is that yes, Lan likes you. No need to ask an artificially intelligent thing.”

Multiple Google tabs stare back at me: How to Tell if Someone Likes You and What Does It Mean When Your Crush Puts a Band-Aid on You. The results are mixed, with one camp advocating for yes, they’re totally into you and another camp calling me absolutely delusional for even thinking so.

“This WikiHow has an outline of how to make your crush like you.”

Cindy rolls her eyes. “You do not need all that. She. Likes. You.”

“You are one opinion! And you’re obviously biased toward me.”

“Okay? The entire justice system is biased! Anyway, this jury of one has decided: Lan definitely has the hots for you.”

My phone rings, saving me from more of Cindy’s antics. My heart skips—maybe it’s Lan—but then I see the caller ID from the FaceTime.

“It’s my dad.”

She gulps. “I’ll… leave you alone to take the call.”

Like a typical Vietnamese dad, mine only does two things with his phone: He posts a lot on Facebook and he sends a thumbs-up emoji to every one of my texts. He never calls. Unless something is wrong.

“Hi, Dad—”

Without even saying hi, he looks at me directly through the screen, and I can tell he’s seeing through all my lies. “Con, you have to help me find Mom’s photos. She’s been freaking out.”

I gulp, imagining Mom tearing our house apart searching for the photographs. The day I opened Mom’s drawer and found them wedged between her immigration documents and visas, it was like something clicked. With those photos in my hands, Vi ? t Nam didn’t feel so far away anymore. They turned it into the place where our history began, where Mom was. “Why don’t you tell her to forget about them for now? I’ll help Mommy find them once I’m home.”

Dad sighs. “I can’t. Mom loves those photos. They… mean a lot to her.”

The guilt that’s been haunting me all semester returns. I didn’t know these photos mean that much to her—after all, they seemed like something she didn’t want to look at. I’ve never even once seen her take them out.

“What do the photos look like? I’ll try to remember if I’ve seen them somewhere in the house.” An outright lie. I’m ashamed of myself.

Dad inhales deeply, like he’s not sure if he should be telling me or not. “They’re photos she took with her from Vi ? t Nam. Photos of her family.”

“Very helpful, Dad.” I try to lighten the mood. “I didn’t know she had family in Vi ? t Nam. She never said anything about them.”

I hate that I can lie so easily.

“Well, con, she does. I think your grandma and aunt are still there, or that’s what I’ve heard.”

I want to scream, I KNOW, DAD! I’M SO CLOSE TO FINDING THEM! But instead I say, “Mom… hasn’t told you anything about them?”

“When I met your mom, she… didn’t want to talk about Vi ? t Nam—at all. It was hard for me to understand how she felt, because I didn’t remember anything—I hadn’t been since I was such a little boy. I wanted to ask her all these questions about Sài Gòn and what it was like when she was growing up.”

His words hurt, and it occurs to me then that, like me, Dad has been grappling with these feelings all his life. Like me, he’s been feeling that push and pull between the United States and Vi ? t Nam, not knowing where he fits in.

“What about Grandpa?” Surely he must have told Dad something . Grandpa lived there for most of his life.

Dad laughs a little. “No, no, your grandpa talked a lot, but he never wanted to mention anything related to Vi ? t Nam. I think… it was really hard for him.”

“How so?” I never got to meet my grandpa, but we had a portrait of him hanging in our hallway. It’s strange, knowing of someone’s face but never fully know them. All my memories of grandpa were just that, a framed photo existing in my childhood home.

“T ? i vì,” Dad continues. “Your grandpa had a lot of war trauma. But like all older Vietnamese folks, they just bottle it in.”

This is the first time I’ve ever heard Dad talk about the war in Vi ? t Nam. I had always assumed that Dad didn’t have much to say, and it never occurred to me that, just like me, he wanted to know about Sài Gòn, but grew up with a parent who kept silent.

“What do you mean by war trauma?”

Dad sighs. “Your ?ng n ? i lived a long life in such a short time. Although he didn’t say much, I’ll always remember what he had told me. He was born in Hà N ? i, but he didn’t remember it because his family fled to Sài Gòn after the war started, when he was very young. He eventually joined the Southern Vietnamese government and after the war ended, took me with him to H ? ng K?ng. If he hadn’t… I think ?ng N ? i would have been sent to a reeducation camp, and who knows what would have happened to me.”

I didn’t know that. Didn’t know a lot of things. But ironically, being in Vi ? t Nam has allowed me to know more and more—peeling back each layer in my family’s history. Dad, like me, has been piecing together bits and fragments of everything.

“Do you remember H ? ng K?ng?”

Dad shakes his head. “No. I was too small. But your grandpa? He talked about it even after we left. I think it gave him some claustrophobia. For the rest of his life, he’d disapprove of anything too small, too cramped, or too dirty.”

“That… kind of sounds like Mom.”

“Well, con, Mom was a boat person, too.”

I blink. I’m not sure I want to understand what that means. “Boat person?”

Dad nods. “You know that a lot of people left Vi ? t Nam after the war. The ones that left by sea—we call them boat people. Your mom was part of the last wave. She also landed in H ? ng K?ng before making her way to the United States.”

My mind whirls, and I realize I’d never thought about how Mom actually got to California. In my mind, she’d magically left Sài Gòn somehow and just never looked back. Growing up in Little Saigon, I knew of friends’ family members who had immigrated from Vi ? t Nam. I just never put it together that there’s an encompassing term, boat people , and suddenly everything makes much more sense.

“How do you know all of this? Did Mom tell you?”

He chuckles softly. “No. When we met, Mom told me when she arrived in California, and the rest I sort of put together. You tend to learn a lot when you start talking to the older Vietnamese folks in Little Saigon, especially if you’re a stranger to them. I think, sometimes, it’s easier for people to say the things they’ve repressed for so long to someone they don’t know. But with family? There’s always that fear of being judged, of not knowing whether your family will still love you.”

“I could never hate Mom.”

“I know, con,” Dad sighs. “But I understand if you’re angry that you didn’t know. When you’re young, you can’t help but resent them for not telling you. I know I did with ?ng N ? i.”

“But you still love ?ng N ? i.”

“Of course. It’s a very, very hard thing that he did, becoming a refugee. And though he didn’t talk much about Vi ? t Nam and our relationship wasn’t the best, I’m still thankful that he loved me so much that he risked everything to give me a chance at survival. But love is so complicated, con. I knew he loved me, and I knew how important it was to be grateful—that he did everything for me. Still, I wanted to know about my mom and our country so badly.”

I hadn’t ever thought about Dad’s relationship with ?ng N ? i and how he, too, has always felt all these complicated feelings about wanting to be grateful but also wanting to know so much more that guilt eats you alive. “How do you do it? How do you understand when the people you want answers from refuse to talk?”

Dad shakes his head. “I didn’t. Con oi, sometimes, certain scars run too deep… and trying too hard to understand will just hurt the person you love.”

“So I can never know? I should just… not pry and be a good daughter?”

Dad is silent, and I know it’s because he understands what I’m trying to say. That for all my life, all I’ve ever wanted was for Mom to tell me about Vi ? t Nam.

“I don’t know, con. I didn’t try, but… maybe you can.”

I let his words and their implications linger between us over the phone. “Do you think she’ll ever be ready?”

“Just remember, con, that at the end of the day, Mom and a lot of people just wanted hope. And that meant they had to leave home behind.”